U`khand floods: `400 people from MP still missing`

Bhopal: Around 300 to 400 people from Madhya Pradesh are still missing in flood hit Uttarakhand and efforts are on to trace them, state Culture and Public Relations Minister Laxmikant Sharma Monday said.

"Right now, around 300 to 400 persons from Madhya Pradesh are missing and efforts are on to trace them," he said.

An aircraft carrying pilgrims from Madhya Pradesh left this morning from Dehradun and it will reach Bhopal soon, he said.

The minister had gone to Uttarakhand with a team of 60 officials from Madhya Pradesh, all of whom were working at different places in the rain-ravaged state.

He was deputed by MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to go to Uttarakhand and provide assistance to people from the state who have been affected there.

The minister also termed the devastation caused by rains, cloud bursts and landslides in Uttarakhand as the biggest tragedy he has witnessed.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the Uttarakhand tragedy is much bigger than even the Bhopal gas disaster in December 1984," Sharma said over phone from Dehradun.
The death toll could be much more than the present estimates, he said.
According to reports, a total of 60 villages have been washed away and no one knows how many people were living there, he said.

The Minister said that he met many eye witnesses of the tragedy who informed him of how they saw bodies floating in the flood water.
The devastation has caused so much damage that it would take at least two to three years to repair it, said Sharma, who has been camping in Dehradun for the last six days.